The U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday quietly released its preliminary report on Russian hacking. The Committee, headed by Chairman Richard Burr (R-NC) (photo, left), says Russian hackers “accessed voter registration databases,” and were able to “alter or delete voter registration data.”
The report does not say if any votes or registration data were changed, only that it “has not seen any evidence that vote tallies were manipulated or that voter registration information was deleted or modified.”
It adds the cautionary note that “a small number of districts in key states can have a significant impact in a national election.” Indeed, less than 80,000 votes across just three states handed the Electoral College win to Donald Trump.
The report makes clear the Senate Intelligence Committee “has limited information about whether, and to what extent, state and local officials carried out forensic or other examination of election infrastructure systems in order to confirm whether election-related systems were compromised.”
To be clear, it says: “It is possible that additional activity occurred and has not yet been uncovered.”
In other words, changes could have been made, but the Committee does not know.
How widespread were the Russian attacks on U.S. election infrastructure?
Between 18 and 21 states “had election systems targeted by Russian-affiliated cyber actors in some fashion.”
“In a small number of states, these cyber actors were in a position to, at a minimum, alter or delete voter registration data; however, they did not appear to be in a position to manipulate individual votes or aggregate vote totals.”
The complete report is available on on the Senate Intelligence Committee’s website.